River of Eden (17 page)

For someone who'd only been back on the boat for two minutes and spent half of that screaming bloody murder, she'd done some pretty fast figuring. Even terrified, her mind had been working like a steel trap, and he wondered why Tutanji couldn't have sent him somebody like Annie Parrish as a helper, instead of all these damn snakes all the time—because he was sure that's exactly what had turned her pale with fright. Twice before, someone had tried to board the
Sucuri
without his permission, and both times, the men had seen a huge snake, an anaconda in the main cabin. The stories of those sightings had spread fast, and far, and wide. Hell, his boat hadn't even had a name until the first time it had happened.

“I've got a few things going on,” he admitted. “But nothing I can't handle.”

For such a small movement, the raising of her eyebrows packed one hell of a punch, casting every ounce of his integrity and judgment into doubt. “The smart thing for me to do is to get as far away from you as I can, and—”

“Right,” he agreed, interrupting her, not wanting her to say more. “But not in Barcelos, Annie. Not tonight.”

“You're dangerous,” she said.

“Yes,” he admitted. “But so are you, and we seem to get along okay.”

“I'm afraid of snakes,” she told him unnecessarily.

“Terrified” would have been his choice of words, based on the look in her eyes when he'd walked into the cabin. He just hoped she wasn't afraid of him, but that could have been asking a lot at this point.

“Lots of people are.”

“I have dreams,” she confessed. “Snake dreams. Nightmares. I wake up sweating, Will. Sweating and strangling.”

So did he when he dreamed about snakes, but he always dreamed about the same snake, just the one—over and over.

“We can talk about dreams, if you want,” he promised. “Later, after we're out of here.”

A groan from Juanio backed up the rightness of that decision.

“You can't stay, Annie. Not here.”

She looked at him for a long moment, before glancing away and rubbing her hand over her face.

“Meu Deus,”
she murmured. My God.

I
T WAS AN
hour before Will guided the
Sucuri
close in to one of the river islands and found a mooring, an hour that Annie had spent trying to sort things out and calm down. Juanio was still on board and out cold, and she was beginning to wonder if someone could literally scare themselves into a coma. Luiz was behind them, but Will had grounded him with the simple expediency of jimmying the plane door open, cutting the ignition wires, and handing out the Cessna toolkit to every kid who had come running when he'd whistled. Like a chattering, giggling school of piranhas, they'd swarmed over the plane with flying arms and nimble fingers, stripping it down to
its bones. The first wing had been disappearing down the dock even as the
Sucuri
had drifted into the current off the Barcelos waterfront. A pair of urchins clutching Cessna seat cushions to their chests had been following the wing. Luiz would be lucky to have a pontoon strut left by the time he woke up.

The emeralds and diamonds were another story altogether. Will wasn't just hauling them someplace for Fat Eddie. He was taking them to Corisco Vargas, according to what he'd told Luiz and Juanio, which meant she and Will were more than heading in the same direction. They were headed for the same damned place, and the man she was trying to avoid was the one he was intending to find.

When she'd stumbled onto Corisco's Cauaburi operation a year ago, she'd been so far out in the boondocks, there wasn't a place she'd stepped that had been on any map. But Will must have a map, and even though at this point in time, he thought the only treasure to be found at the end of it were the gems he was taking there, the man wasn't an average type of guy. No matter how far he'd fallen off the botanical research bandwagon, he would always look at the forest as a botanist, a brilliant, highly skilled botanist with an eye for plants, which meant he'd become just one more big problem she had to contain. He could have all the
Aganisia cyanea
he could find, but she doubted if he would find very much. No one had ever found more than a single flower on the Marauiá or anywhere else. Her concern was
Epidendrum luminosa, and
it was all hers, every last luminous petal and sepal, every glowing calyx and corolla.

Perched on the galley countertop, her head already in her hands, she let out an exasperated sigh. She was beginning to feel decidedly star-crossed.

And the damned snake. She'd recognized the
sucuri
looming up out of the dark, known the serpent for what it was, and would never forget it, whether it had been real or her imagination.

It sure as hell had looked real, but either way left her on shaky ground and with the uncomfortable conviction that Will Travers was a man privy to more freaky supernatural hoodoo than a person could beat with a stick, the kind of stuff she'd made a career out of avoiding.

Beneath her, she felt the low throb of the engine slowing to a halt, and she looked up to see Will throttling down.

“I'll tie up,” he said, latching the wheel. “There's some tobacco in that last drawer over there. Blow a little smoke on Juanio. See if you can get him to come around.”

Tobacco was a cure-all in the Amazon.
Nicotiana tabacum
was smoked, chewed, made into a syrup, and ingested, all with amazing results. More often than not, it was a shaman's first line of defense, and that Travers's first thought was to blow a little smoke on Juanio only proved her point about his experience.

“Blow a little smoke,” she muttered, rummaging through the drawer. It was full of all kinds of leaves and stems, flowers and buds, some bagged, some not, some labeled, most not. He had at least two dozen small jars holding plant material, a lime gourd, and about a pound of
Erythroxylum novogranatense
leaves, coca. She finally came up with a cotton bag of tobacco, some whole leaves, some cut, and a packet of papers. Taking the civilized route, she used the papers, rolling a cigarette and licking it closed.

By the time Travers returned, she was sitting on the
floor next to Juanio, blowing smoke rings around the chubby guy.

“You want some coffee?” he asked, offering the other Brazilian cure-all.

“Por favor.”

In a few minutes, he sat down next to her and handed her a steaming hot, sugary sweet
cafezinho.

“Thanks.”

He took the cigarette from her hand, and she watched as he took a long draw and blew the smoke out, wreathing the Brazilian bandit. “Come on, Juanio,
acorda.
Wake up.”

Annie took a sip of coffee, inhaling the fragrant smoke and thinking how cozy it all would be, if it wasn't ninety-eight degrees with ninety-nine percent humidity, and he wasn't the single most disturbing man she'd ever met.

Half the problem, she decided, was the way he looked, a little too wild, a little too far over the edge, a little too beautiful to be the derelict she'd thought he was in Pancha's. Of course, the bigger half was about Vargas and the gems, and the snake thing, and that he hadn't denied a word of what she'd said about a shaman getting hold of him.

“Juanio,” he said softly, coaxingly. “Come back so we can talk, amigo.”

The half about him kissing her hardly bore thinking about. She'd been kissed, if not by a lot of people, at least enough to know Will Travers did it with skilled concentration and an intensity that could completely undermine a woman's moral fabric. She'd definitely been left a little frayed around the edges by the experience.

Frayed and curious. If that's what his kiss did to her, she wondered, letting her gaze drift to his mouth—what would the rest of it be like?

She remembered how he'd danced in Pancha's, and she remembered how it had felt to have his lips moving over hers, his mouth open, the taste of him, the gentle aggression that had kept asking for more, and delivering more every time she gave in. It had felt like sex, at least the sex of her fantasies, the sex no one ever seemed to have in real life.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, and her head jerked up, a blush streaking across her cheeks.

“Um… fine.” She could hardly tell him the truth, that he'd short-circuited her common sense, and she'd be damned if she didn't wonder if he could do it again.

“You've got a little color back,” he said.

Right, she thought, feeling the warmth in her cheeks.

“So what's this with Vargas and the gems?” she asked. She didn't want to think about his mouth, or his kiss. For that matter, she didn't want to think about Vargas, either, but she'd better.

“A little business.”

“What kind of business?”

He shrugged and took another long drag off the cigarette.

“I meant what I said back at the cantina, about Vargas being worse than Fat Eddie.”

He blew the smoke out. “What makes you think so?”

“Fat Eddie likes being a honcho in Manaus. He likes pushing people around with his money. Even the head-shrinking thing is to make a big macho statement about what a tough character he is, about how people better not mess with him. But Vargas…” Her voice trailed off.

Talking about Vargas was dangerous. She didn't want to stir up too much of what she'd put behind her.

“Vargas is what?” he asked, watching her more carefully than she liked.

“Unpredictable. You can't count on him going for the money. His idea of power is far more refined than Fat Eddie's. He likes mind games, and he's very good at them.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“I'd be a fool not to be, and so would you.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

She should have seen that one coming, but she hadn't.

“No,” she said after a moment's hesitation, giving him that much even if it was half a lie. “I'm not afraid of you. I figure we have at least one more day together on this damn boat, probably more, unless my luck takes a big swing to the good, and I would like to forge some kind of working relationship. You are Dr. William Sanchez Travers. Or were. I've read all your books, and we haven't shared so much as a single insight on Amazonian botany. All we seem to do is—”

“Run for our lives,” he filled in for her, then took another drag off the cigarette and blew it over Juanio. “I've read your work, too. You were last published in the
Journal of Ethnobotany
two years ago.”

Annie couldn't help herself, she was ridiculously pleased. “The article on beekeeping by the Barasana?”

He nodded, squinting at her through the smoke. “I had an entomologist on board just last week. She'd read it, too.”

She? “Who?”

“Dr. Erica Grunstead, brought her down from São Gabriel. Do you know her?”

Did Annie know the lovely and brilliant Dr. Erica Grunstead?

“Um, yes. We've met a couple of times at RBC.” A couple of times when Erica had proven over and over again that it was possible to be a Class A scientist, a Grade A field researcher, and a perfect lady at the same time. Annie had been frankly amazed at the woman's sophistication.

“She's a nice person.”

“Very nice,” Annie had to agree. The woman had treated her with all the kindness of a sister.

“Smart, too.”

“Harvard, wasn't she?” Annie asked, though she knew perfectly well that Dr. Erica Grunstead indeed came from the same prestigious Harvard line of Amazonian research scientists as Dr. William Sanchez Travers.

“Three years behind me. I knew her in Cambridge.”

“Oh.” Annie was completely disgusted with what that little news item did to her.

“She hasn't changed much. Still real pretty. Knows how to use a comb. Doesn't know how to detonate a grenade.”

He was baiting her. Annie knew it, and still rose to her own defense. “It's the humidity that makes my hair fluff out like this.”

“Right.” He laughed. The bastard laughed, and her cheeks burned. “Annie, we're going to have a hell of a lot more than one more day together on this damn boat. Barcelos was supposed to be the solution. It wasn't the problem.”

“Barcelos was your problem,” she pointed out. “I'm not the one being chased up the river by a couple of
garimpeiro
jewel thieves.”

“No. You're the one with the piranha-toothed, machete-wielding psychotic on your trail.”

Damn him. She was too tired to fence with words. “You should really let me win once in a while just to keep the game interesting.”

“You can have the galley award,” he conceded graciously. “Erica didn't cook, and you've done a real nice job with the meals.”

She shot him a look that would have killed a lesser man, and ran into a grin that was pure, unadulterated mischief. It curved the corners of his mouth, lit the depths of his eyes, and did the most awful thing to her heart.

“Are you going to make a career out of teasing me?” she groused, trying to counteract the damned sense of longing his grin inspired.

“But it's true,” he said, all innocence. “She couldn't boil water, or gut a fish, and not once, the whole week she was on my boat, did she make me want to back her up against a wall and kiss her until our eyes crossed.”

Innocence should have been difficult to hold on to after a statement like that, but he managed without so much as breaking a sweat. Annie couldn't say the same for herself. The picture he'd put in her mind made her feel flushed all over. She wanted to tell him that he must be mistaken, because for the most part, men did not find her particularly attractive, especially after they got to know her.

But he wasn't most men, and he had no reason to be intimidated by her intelligence, or her degrees, or her wealth of experience tracking over a large section of the world's last unknown rain forest, a deed that set her outside the realm of most men's egos. And he certainly
didn't have any reason to be intimidated by her reputation. His easily exceeded hers on all counts, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and would continue to so right up until she brought back the
Epidendrum luminosa.
Then all bets were off.

“I don't know why not. She's damned pretty.” She shrugged, holding on to her nonchalance by a thread.